Personal reflections, comment, discussion by and for doctors working in Aboriginal Medical Services or those who want to understand their work better.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Aboriginal Education and Closing the Gap – Is it time to turn it inside-out?

"We may be doomed to fail – I fear – until we achieve the most basic
target of all: the expectation that every child will attend school every
day."

Those are the words of Tony Abbott, Prime Minister, in his speech to parliament a few weeks ago. It's difficult to disagree. He went on to propose a new target:

"to end the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous school attendance within five years."

And he goes on to say every school should know their attendance rates, and talk about anti-truancy measures.

In health, we have started to wonder why it is that people might not want to come to our health services, and discovered, to our surprise, that we open at inconvenient hours, people don't have transport to get there, we charge them money, make the rooms look unwelcoming and then insult people. Health providers are starting to think about making our services more welcoming.

Much of the commentary I've seen about improving school attendance rates in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children talks about removing people's money and employing truancy officers. No where is it asked "Is there a reason these children might not want to come to school?"

We just assume that the way schools are run are how it has to be. Is there another way? Could schools run in a way that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and parents are clamoring to go?

I'm not saying this is how we should do it. But I am saying perhaps we can be more imaginative in how we think about school that makes children want to come.

Here is what Andy wrote about what he learned in Alaska.

Everything
created is around us. We are just part of it. But you teach your children
behind doors, and thank your creator behind walls.

Noel
Butler

On the northern headland of Ulladulla
Harbour in New South Wales you can take a stroll around ‘One Track for All’ The
track is punctuated with carvings depicting the history of the area. It
examines the history prior to the arrival of Europeans and since their arrival.
The above quote is taken from one of the carvings on display.

Currently in Australia we are grappling
with ways to improve educational outcomes for our Indigenous Students. This,
like all issues relating to Education, attracts a multitude of opinions. Most
people have been to school and most people are quick to offer up solutions to
educational challenges based upon their experiences. Sadly, the experiences of
many of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people haven’t been happy ones when
it comes to their time spent at school, and they can’t be blamed for having a
lack of trust in our education systems, or a lack of desire to subject their
children to similar experiences. Many well-intentioned and dedicated
professionals have struggled in their attempts to improve educational outcomes
for Indigenous students.

I was grappling with this problem in 2006,
whilst working as a principal of a school in Sydney, NSW. We had a special unit
at my school which served students with Emotional Disturbance and Behaviour
Disorders. These students would arrive from around the district with high
levels of disengagement from the learning process. A significant number of the
children were Aboriginal. The school had highly developed Environmental
Programs and was a pilot school for the Australian Sustainable Schools
Initiative (AuSSI).It was during this
period that I noticed that the environmental education programs were having a
significant impact in re-engaging these students in the learning process. I was
keen to explore this idea further and over the next twelve months I developed a
study proposal which I submitted to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust at the
beginning of 2008.

I was fortunate enough to be awarded a
Churchill Fellowship later that year which took me to the United Kingdom and
USA to study Environmental Education and Student Engagement.

The fellowship was undertaken between the
1st September and the 5th October 2008.There were three main goals for the
fellowship:

1.To
equip the next generation of children with the necessary skills required to
overcome the challenges that lie ahead of them.

2.To
provide innovative learning programs for Aboriginal students and enhance their
performance in literacy and numeracy.

3.To
re-engage students with challenging behaviours in the learning process using
authentic experiences in quality learning environments.

In New York State I was able to attend a
lecture and workshop on the theme of “Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit
Disorder” at Cornell University and also had the opportunity to gain ideas from
practitioners in the field and meet with a Native American Professor with a
wealth of experience in Indigenous Studies. I then travelled to Fairbanks
Alaska to spend some time at a high school with an enrolment of more than 90%
Native American students.

Environmental Education as a Key Element in Achieving
Successful Learning Outcomes for Indigenous Students

I had the pleasure of meeting with
Professor Jane Mt Pleasant at Cornell University in Ithaca. Jane specialises in
Soil Sciences, but had been the head of the Native American Studies Program at
Cornell until recently. Jane is a Native American and she provided me with some
valuable insights into student engagement.

She explained that Native Americans have a
spiritual connection with the land and a highly developed sense of place in
much the same way as Australian Aboriginal people. This made Environmental
Education an excellent vehicle for learning. She cautioned against programs
that were tokenistic and tried to steer clear of programs that were just about
“beads and feathers.” She graciously shared aspects of her own learning journey
with me and the two hour interview that we had scheduled seemed to be over in
minutes. Her advice to me was to examine what was happening in Alaska as there
were some excellent programs in that state. This was very encouraging as I
explained that I was heading North to Alaska the very next day.

I travelled to Fairbanks, Alaska and spent
three days at Effie Kokrine Charter School. This school was a school of choice
for the students. More than ninety percent of students were Native American
with the vast majority being Athabascan Indian.

The schools vision, mission and goals were
clearly defined and are as follows:

Vision

Students will learn through their
individual learning styles and develop core values to guide their lives. When
they graduate, they will leave as successful students, empowered, reflective,
and grounded in tradition/culture.

Mission

Our mission is to empower students through understanding
and utilizing individual learning styles, reflection through portfolios, and
grounding in tradition/culture through blending western and traditional ways of
knowing in forming our world view.

Goals

1.100%
of students in the junior and senior classes be involved in taking college
classes in their area of interest.

2.80%
of graduates from Effie Kokrine Charter School will be students who began
attending school at EKCS in the 7th grade.

3.80
% of students taking the HSGQE at Effie Kokrine Charter School will be
proficient in reading, writing and math.

4.90%
of students enrolled at Effie Kokrine Charter School will be, on any given day,
present and in class on time.

5.100%
of students at Effie Kokrine Charter School will have a clearly defined and
developed life plan in place.

The curriculum of the school was planned
thematically for the year around Numeracy, Language, Culture and Literacy and
every grade in the school covered the same topic but at different levels
through a spiralling content. All subjects were built on an Athabascan Values
Framework (in italics)

On my first day at the school I sat in on a
class where students were presenting assessment tasks as a culmination activity
for their unit on Subsistence. A young girl was reading a procedure to the
class that she had written on “How to Disembowel a Moose.” She had detailed
knowledge and when I questioned the students, many class members had killed
their first moose. They explained the traditional laws that must be followed and
it was obvious that they had developed the values of sharing, providing for
family, compassion and love and dignity that underpinned this unit of work.
Later in the day the students went out to the snow covered vegetable garden to
weed. They had harvested the crop the week before as part of the unit and had
used some of the food at a community “Potluck” in the school gymnasium.
Environmental Education has a strong connection with subsistence lifestyle and
this was evident in the assessment tasks presented by the other students on
topics such as fishing and caribou hunting. The children were very much aware
of the balance in nature and the need to preserve it.

Lessons were based upon authentic learning
experiences. I learnt how to split spruce roots for basket weaving and canoe
making. Year 11 students had subjects such as Boat/Snow Machine Maintenance and
Arctic Biology, and Year 10 students studied Climate Change in the Sub-Arctic,
and Traditional Shelter and Clothing. Year 9 were engaged in studies of Survival
in the Boreal Forest and Migration and Sense of Place.

Elders were welcome in the school and
parents came and went at will as a result of the school’s open door policy. I
interviewed a parent of a girl who told me that her daughter would have been lost
in the local high school and that Effie Kokrine was a safe haven for her. She
said that the parents valued the school because they believed that the school
valued them.

I interviewed a student who had only
recently enrolled in the school from interstate, or the “Lower 48” as the other
states are referred to in Alaska. He told me that he really valued this school
as it was good to study Indigenous Culture and Values and that it made the
learning more relevant to him.

The school principal, Mrs Linda Evans, who
is Athabascan, felt that the school was managing the thematic approach to the
curriculum really well in the Junior High School as the class structure leant
itself to a thematic approach to learning. She believed that this was more
difficult in the Senior High School where teachers had been trained with
traditional secondary pedagogy. This observation was similar in British Schools
and indeed in Australia. Senior High teachers are very much driven by external
testing agendas and this tends to limit their ability to integrate learning
across several subject areas. I was interested to hear from a Native American
Math teacher in the Senior High School who said that he was keen to develop a
more integrated approach which incorporated Learning Styles as set out in the
school’s mission. I interviewed an English teacher, who felt that this was too
difficult, yet when I observed his lesson he had integrated traditional culture
and environmental education brilliantly.

All of the teachers in the Junior High School
were Native American and half of the Senior High School teachers were also.
They were highly qualified with several of the teachers having qualifications
in Learning Styles and several teachers undertaking studies in an Advanced
Learning Styles course. The intellectual quality of the work was rich and
students were highly engaged. It is interesting to note that many of the
students came from challenging family backgrounds, but rose above these
challenges in the school environment. Children had to sit state exams even
though their curriculum was different. The school had set grade level
equivalences into their curriculum to ensure that state expectations and
standards could be maintained.

The principal had only been appointed a few
weeks before my visit. She is committed to the school’s mission and is planning
to strengthen the school’s ability to fulfil it through well planned
professional learning for the staff. She has a very demanding role as she is
the only administrative staff member on the teaching staff and doesn’t have any
other members of staff in school leadership positions. She is working hard to
strengthen the collective vision of the staff.

I left the school with a firm belief that
Environmental Education can provide authentic learning experiences for all
students, and is a particularly engaging vehicle for Indigenous Students. I can
also see great value in connecting students from Australia with students from
different cultural backgrounds using the internet to enhance their
understanding of the world as a whole.

I believe that Noel Butler was right in his
criticism. Let’s empower our First Australians by building their learning
around their cultural values, and taking them outside to reconnect with Mother
Earth and authentic learning. Maybe just maybe it’s not too late to regain
their trust as learners and really close the gap.

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